A former Pixar animator and Oakland father has launched a crowdfunding effort to raise money to produce “The Book of Mojo,” an animated short about the adventures of a 13-year-old girl in the near future.

Everett Downing’s short will be based on his self-published fantasy webcomic. Set in an urban landscape, the story follows Lucy, a runaway from the foster care system who trying to re-uinte with her father with the help of Mojo, an enchanted 7-foot-tall statute.

A situation with one of his two daughters inspired Downing to create a fantasy world full of magic and a diverse cast of characters, according to a press release.

His bright and confident daughter came home one day from kindergarten, no longer wanting to play with her multicultural dolls, lamenting she wasn’t beautiful and longing for “blonde skin and white hair.”

Downing grabbed his sketched pad and got to work. As a story artist and animator, Downing has worked at Pixar, Blue Sky and Dreamworks and his work can be seen in such classics as “Ratatouille,” “Up,” “Toy Story 3,” “Brave,” and “Ice Age 1 and 2.”

“In my 15 year career at Pixar, Blue Sky and Dream Works, I observed and learned from the mavericks in the industry,” Downing says.

Could it be that a Mojo franchise in in Downing’s future? Possibly. The aspiring director said he just wanted to tell a great story “where the characters in it reflect the population of the world.”

As of Friday afternoon, “Mojo’s” crowdfunding site on IndieGogo has raised $9,614 towards a $40,000 goal.

The August 11 death by suicide of Robin Williams hit fellow Bay Area comedian Brian Copeland hard. “So many of us who call comedy our profession are depressives,” says Copeland, also a popular local radio and TV talk show host and actor who has dealt with his own bouts of depression and suicidal thoughts.

Indeed, Copeland in 2012 created a critically acclaimed one-man show, “The Waiting Period,” based on a dark point in Copeland’s life when he shopped for a gun to kill himself. In the wake of Williams’ death, Copeland has decided to revive the show, which he performs Saturday evenings at the Marsh theater in San Francisco through November 22.

“I think this is an opportunity to have the discussion about depression that our society is afraid to have,” Copeland says. “That’s why I’ve decided to remount “The Waiting Period”. Each performance will be dedicated to the memory of someone who lost the battle and a percentage of the proceeds will go to the charity of the family’s choosing.”

Copeland is performing “The Waiting Period” in repertory with his other acclaimed solo piece, “Not a Genuine Black Man.”

Somewhat to his surprise, “The Waiting Period” is his most requested work. Perhaps because it’s a show about depression that isn’t depressing. He certainly depicts difficult moments — his struggles to get out bed, shop for groceries to make his kids dinner and put off inquiries about his well being by a good friend. But he leavens them with humorous observations about his situation and the people around him. He even turns his gun quest into a dark comic moment, faking knowledge about firearms to appear cool to the gun shop clerks.

The title and premise for the show comes from the 10 days Copeland must wait, per California law, to clear background checks and take home his gun.

“Of all my plays, ‘The Waiting Period’ is the most difficult for me to perform,” Copeland says. “In order to make the feelings real for the audience, it has to be real for me. During the parts of the play where I’m trying to help people understand what it’s like to suffer from this disease, I have to physically and mentally go to those dark places. If it isn’t real for me, it won’t be real for them. It’s hard. The initial run of the show was 18 months. It could have certainly run longer but emotionally, I couldn’t keep walking along the razor’s edge like that every night. It started to pull me back in.”

But Copeland says the play, which he calls his “problem child,” has literally saved lives. That’s because it brings depression, which touches every family in America, “out of the shadows,” he says.

As ALS Ice Bucket Challenge fever continues to spread across the globe, rocker friends of Richmond’s Jason Becker, a former guitarist who has lived with ALS for 25 years, will perform at a special benefit in Becker’s honor Saturday night at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall.

Caregivers Serrana Pilar, left, and Marylin White put a zip bag filled with ice water on the head of Jason Becker, 45, as part of the ALS ice water challenge trend at his home in Richmond, Calif., on Saturday, Aug. 23, 2014. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

The concert comes one week after Becker himself performed the challenge and posted it on YouTube. He can no longer walk, speak or play guitar and had to figure out a way to participate without leaking water into his tracheotomy site. His solution? Two friends placed a bag of ice on his head. “Ack!” Becker said, communicating through an eye movement spelling system invented by his father. Becker then challenged friends Eddie Van Halen, David Lee Roth and John Mayer to take the challenge.

Within 24 hours of Becker posting his challenge on YouTube, the video had been viewed 44,000 times. “Now, I can’t thank everyone enough for bring so much attention and awareness to ALS,” Becker said in his video.

Mayer quickly accepted, playing one of Becker’s old guitar recordings and saying “this one’s for you, Jason,” before getting soaked. His YouTube has been viewed 744,000 times as of mid-day Thursday and directs people to Becker’s website, jasonbeckerguitar.com, where people can donate to the Jason Becker Special Needs Trust. Saturday’s concert likewise benefits Becker’s trust.

The concert takes place 8 p.m. at Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell St, San Francisco. General admission tickets are $26; VIP tickets, which include dinner and admission, are $50.95. To order, go to www.slimspresents.com.